


these are the moments i cherish

by kaizuka



Series: Ice and Ink [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 23:57:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17415026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaizuka/pseuds/kaizuka
Summary: Yuuri thinks fondly of the little leather bound notebook he’d buried in between his sweaters. Without even having to open it, Yuuri knows that carefully inscribed on the first page, in both Russian and its English translation, are words of Victor’s love for his city.“My city is called St. Petersburg. It is a beautiful place, with many things to see. I would love for you to come see it, if you’re there. If you exist."





	these are the moments i cherish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TalesofNonsense](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesofNonsense/gifts).



> *This is a _very_ belated birthday/Christmas fic for @talesofnonsense. Tales, you have been such an amazing friend these past years, and I am so happy that something I created brought us together!<3 This is for your request of ‘Yuuri remembering his documentation of Victor’s writing and translating it’. :) I haven’t written our boys in so long and i’m scared that I’m a little rusty… but i love that this gave me the chance to revisit them! I’m rewatching YoI for sure hehe. (also I’m sorry this took so long! ;-;)
> 
> *This is a mini continuation of Unwritten, the first chaptered fic I had ever finished. (Tales’ prompt comes from a mention in the first chapter.) You will have to read that one first to understand this one. I finished Unwritten long before YoI’s ending, and as such, I never got to include things like the kiss, the ballroom dancing, _and_ the rings!! I’ve done my best to kind of intertwine this continuation of the writing soulmate AU with what we know in canon, but please excuse any unintentional slip-ups!
> 
> *title from Feels So Good by Honne!

  
  
  
  
  
  
Yuuri presses cold-stiff fingers against his face, numb even with his gloves, and peers over the top of his hand at the gentle rush of the water before him. It’s early enough that there’s barely any sun peeking over the horizon, and it gives the morning breeze an extra chilling bite when it ghosts across Yuuri’s skin. Still, he welcomes the sting, mindful of the promise of a warm bed and breakfast when he gets home.

Barking carries across the bridge in short bursts. Yuuri barely has time to turn before a wall of fur slams against his leg, and it’s only his grip on the railing that prevents him from careening over on his side. Yuuri stares blankly at the culprit, who beams back at him with the happiest face any poodle could muster.

“Makkachin,” Yuuri chides, more just to say _something_ than to actually scold, and Makkachin gives him a little huff in greeting. “That was rude.”

In lieu of any proper response, the dog merely flops on his side, staring up with beseeching eyes. _Pet me,_ a tiny voice in Yuuri’s imagination supplies. 

It’s also early enough that the bridge is empty of any other pedestrians aside from Yuuri himself, so he allows himself to crouch down in the middle of the walkway and give his poodle a few hearty scratches. When Makkachin deems the petting to be enough, he scrambles to his feet and gives himself a shake before pressing his side against Yuuri’s arm. Crouching now, Yuuri peers through the handrails and into the water again, soaking up the silence of the morning around him.

St. Petersburg was truly a beautiful city, and the longer Yuuri stayed, the more he grew to appreciate it. It had definitely been scary dealing with yet another new country whose language he barely had a grasp of. But unlike when he had moved to Detroit, Yuuri’s transition to St. Petersburg was made much easier thanks to the company he held.

The minute reminder of just _who_ that company was leads Yuuri’s mind yet again to the memory of a warm bed and silver hair splayed against soft pillows. This weekend was one of their free moments off, a couple of days sanctioned by Victor himself to give them both some time to rest. Victor had noted that Yakov would have had a conniption at the idea of a _whole_ weekend of rest. With the fact that Victor had declared himself Yuuri’s coach and fellow competitor, and the eyes of the entire world upon them both, Yuuri had felt inclined to agree. Even so, waking up that morning an hour past their usual wake up time to a sleep tousled Victor was a treat that Yuuri refused to take for granted. 

He’d leaned down to press a kiss to Victor’s cheek and made sure to write a note on his own palm, watching in satisfaction as an exact copy of his writing appeared on Victor’s own hand. _Taking Makkachin out for a walk. Will be back soon._

Yuuri figures that it won’t be long before Victor wakes. He stifles a yawn and entertains the idea of returning to bed and sleeping again until the promise of breakfast turned into brunch. Still, even with Victor waiting at home, Yuuri can’t help but take his time to truly relish a silent walk across a waking city. He’d return to his fiance soon enough--they have the rest of the weekend together, after all. 

Every time Yuuri realizes that he and Victor _truly_ have all the time in the world now to spend with each other and the sport they both loved, he’s overcome with a blush so prominent that he can hardly excuse it on the cold of St. Petersburg’s weather. He’s just… too happy.

Someone clears their throat, and with a start, Yuuri realizes that he’s still right in the middle of the bridge’s walkway, crouched down next to Makkachin and blocking the way of a tired looking gentleman. 

“Sorry,” Yuuri blurts out in Russian as he scrambles aside, only botching the pronunciation a little bit.

The man only grunts out a low “good morning” which surprises Yuuri and takes him a moment to decipher. Before he can return the greeting, the man has passed, walking briskly as if the cold chill of the wind hardly bothered him. 

Silently, Yuuri congratulates himself on his passable Russian conversation, even if he’d only said a single word. Another thing that Yuuri loved about having moved to Victor’s home city was that he had no excuses about learning his fiancé’s language. In fact, it had become useful in more ways than one.

From junior high and onwards, Yuuri had taken pictures of Victor’s handwriting, saving each message like token jewels even if the Russian words were completely incomprehensible to him. When he’d had nothing but a disposable camera, Yuuri had tucked the glossy, overexposed pictures of his hand into a box that he squeezed in the lowest corner of his bookshelf. When Yuuri had gotten his first digital camera, and even when phones with grainy cameras begun to take the world by storm, the photos he took on _those_ were compiled in a neat digital folder on his desktop, titled “Personal”. ( _That_ had prompted a series of questions from Phichit when he’d borrowed Yuuri’s laptop for an essay. The boy had been convinced that Yuuri had sequestered the _dirtiest_ kind of personal files in there, much to Yuuri’s embarrassment.)

Even during and after the whole reveal debacle, Yuuri had logged Victor’s messages down to the letter in any way he could. His smartphone had made things hundreds of times easier. Before Yuuri had even begun making preparations for his move to St. Petersburg, Yuuri had decided to sit down and log some of his favorite messages into a notebook, poring over Russian to English dictionaries and coming out triumphant with rough translations of Victor’s words. And _that_ he now kept tucked deep in one of the drawers Victor had happily given up to him.

Digital cameras, to smartphones, then back to pen on paper. Yuuri now supposes that it could be considered cheesy, but part of him believes it to be incredibly romantic. But he hasn’t shown Victor yet--the embarrassment would probably kill Yuuri. 

Now, Yuuri thinks fondly of the little leather bound notebook he’d buried in between his sweaters. Without even having to flip to open it, Yuuri knows that carefully inscribed on the first page, in both Russian and its English translation, are words of Victor’s love for his city.

_“My city is called St. Petersburg. It is a beautiful place, with many things to see. I would love for you to come see it, if you’re there. If you exist."_

Yuuri doesn’t remember anything about the day that he took that picture. When he’d looked at the worn out photograph, Yuuri had only seen the message, the camera having zoomed in carefully close to the back of his hand. What Yuuri _does_ remember is taking a few pictures, just in case he’d messed up. The back of his hand had been slightly chapped, the ink contrasting darkly with skin that could have possibly been pale from a cold winter day in Japan.

When he’d copied the translation down onto his notebook, Yuuri remembers feeling terrible, the loneliness that Victor must have felt sitting low in Yuuri’s chest. Variations of ‘are you there?’ had been scattered around the pictures Yuuri had taken of Victor’s messages, and soon Yuuri hadn’t needed any translation dictionary or device to help him recognize the Russian words.

However, the best thing about Yuuri’s notebook was that it had a sad beginning, and a confusing middle, but an _incredibly happy_ ending. 

Yuuri stands, stretches, and lets his knees hit the barrier for support. Beside him, Makkachin glances at him, and bows forward in a classic rendition of downward dog. 

Once they’ve loosened cold limbs, Yuuri places a hand on Makkachin’s head, petting soft curls for a half second before turning at the sound of high pitched laughter. Yuuri leans back immediately, pressing Makkachin’s gently against his side as they narrowly avoid a young couple all but dancing down the walkway.Their arms are tangled together, and they press close to each other despite being bundled up by thick coats and scarves.

The girl shrieks, mirth in her high voice as she points to the boy’s cheek. He slaps a hand to his face, but not before Yuuri sees words dancing into existence in English, much to his surprise. _And_ pleasure, because he can clearly read that who ever the boy was connected to had scrawled _‘have fun u 2!!!!! <3’_ in big, obnoxious letters on his face. 

_“Today someone drew a great big mustache on my classmate’s face! A bright pink one. I’ll do that to you someday. )))”_

Yuuri can no longer _look_ at the color purple without bursting into laughter at the thought of a purple mustache being the catalyst for a life changing confession. When he’d first translated that message, Yuuri had promptly laughed until he’d cried.

As the girl’s ensuing laughter at the boy’s expense, and the latter’s grumbling disappear into the distance, Yuuri slides his left glove off and rummages in his coat pocket for a pen. His fingers are instantly numb from the cold, but he uncaps his pen anyway and writes underneath the first message on his palm: _I’m heading home soon. :)_

Since there had been no reply to his first message, Yuuri supposes that Victor is still fast asleep, unable to feel the tickling of a pen across his hand. 

The sensation was an almost new occurrence, something that Yuuri had never felt until he’d moved to Russia to be with Victor and Makkachin full time. Yuuri had begun to write to his fiance more than ever before, both men trading small notes even when they were in the same room. Before long, Yuuri realized he had begun to feel Victor’s handwriting as it was imprinted on himself--a ghostlike sensation of a pen skating across skin, present but barely touching. 

It wasn’t until Yuuri brought it up to his fiancé that Victor admitted to hearing that this was a usual case for soulmates who had been in constant contact with each other since the connection was formed, much to Yuuri’s dismay. (Any reminder of his years of reluctance to contact Victor always left Yuuri cringing and pressing apologetic kisses to Victor’s face.)

Despite the bittersweet realization, Yuuri had been delighted at the idea that the bond was almost like a live thing, growing stronger and manifesting itself in different ways as the pair grew closer. Still, even after everything, Yuuri figures he never needed a soulmate connection to know that Victor was the one and only romantic love Yuuri ever wanted in this life. (But being able to write to him constantly was a huge plus.)

A feeling of awareness buzzes at the back of his mind, a tickling that falls past his neck and all the way down to the back of his hand. Yuuri pauses in the middle of sliding his glove back on and is pleased to find well-loved handwriting being scrawled onto skin. 

_Yuuri,_ Victor’s sloping handwriting says now, _I’m awake. I’m glad you’re coming back soon._ The English letters look slightly wobbly, as if writing to Yuuri had been the first drowsy thing Victor had done upon waking up. Yuuri pulls his pen out of his pocket again in less than a second and tugs the cap off with his teeth, his eyes narrowing minutely as he attempts to write back a proper response with cold-stiff fingers. 

_Yup,_ he writes back to his fiancé. _See you soon. It’s freezing!_

Victor sends back a lopsided smiley face and promises of warm hugs that has Yuuri’s heart feeling a little off-kilter.

“Home, Makkachin?” Yuuri asks, and the dog perks up immediately at the sound of a familiar word. “Victor? Want to go home to Victor?”

Makkachin barks excitedly and presses against Yuuri again, wiggling bodily in his excitement. Yuuri doesn’t bother with a leash, but carefully keeps one eye on the poodle, making sure the dog doesn’t stray too far as they start their quiet trek back to Victor’s home. Yuuri’s left arm begins to prickle again, a light tingling sensation that prompts Yuuri to pull back the sleeve of his jacket once he and Makkachin pause at a crosswalk.

_Pancakes, my love!_ appears Victor’s writing, untidy in his haste. _Not to mention hot cocoa. Are you almost home? I hope this doesn’t tickle too much!_

Yuuri laughs as he follows the scrawl of words, turning his arm to follow their path. Another pedestrian turns at the sound, her eyes crinkling at the block of ink at Yuuri’s arm before she averts her eyes away politely, careful not to sneak a look at Victor’s message. Yuuri turns towards her shyly, intent on greeting her a good morning before her eyes meet his again. He pauses at the all-too familiar look in her eyes; resentful curiosity veiled by blank indifference. Either the woman doesn’t have a soulmate, or just hasn’t connected with hers yet--Yuuri doesn’t like to assume.

_“Today someone asked me if I have a soulmate. She didn’t have one.  
Are you there?”_

The woman startles when their eyes lock, and the blankness in her eyes vanishes as she shoots Yuuri a gentle smile before taking off first down the crosswalk. Yuuri watches her go almost absently, before he realizes he has only half the time left to make it to the other side of the road.

He’s met all sorts of people with differing opinions on the topics of soulmates in general. Some had adored the idea of soulmates, some had been happy without one, and some just hadn’t cared at all. But it was the wistful expressions that Yuuri remembered the most, and had been something he’d seen the most often after he’d played that tic tac toe game with Victor, and the latter had used his and Yuuri’s skin as his personal notepad.

_“Milk. Eggs. Document signed for Yakov.”  
“Ha ha, sorry soulmate! This is today’s to do list!”_

_“Salchow. (Scribbled out.) Spin. (Scribbled out.) Death spiral!!!! Just kidding.”_

_“It is very cold out. I’m sleepy. Yakov‘s voice is so... boring. Don’t tell him I said that. Do you skate?”_

Yuuri doesn’t have pictures of their tic tac toe game—the very first time Victor had become aware of Yuuri’s existence. It had simply disappeared too fast for Yuuri to capture the moment, and it’s a fact that Yuuri mourns constantly. Even so, the following messages after their first interaction had more than made up for it. 

_“I know you don’t know me, but I love you!”_ (This one is immediately followed by a shakily scrawled ‘I love you!’ in Japanese.)

Makkachin barks, grabbing Yuuri’s attention instantly. The dog’s stare is focused on a couple of park birds, their feathers fluffed up against the cold. Victor hasn’t messaged again, so Yuuri lets Makkachin take off in a blur of brown fur, watching the dog carefully as he dashes around the birds excitedly. Yuuri sighs and leans against the wall of a nearby lamppost, watching the poodle as he skirted a trash can to leap at another unsuspecting bird. Yuuri and Victor had discussed getting another dog, but with Makkachin around, Yuuri found that the little Vicchan shaped hole in his heart, while not healed, definitely hurt a little less.

The first ‘full’ conversation he had with Victor had been after he’d arrived home after he’d boarded the plane back to Detroit, resigned to spending the rest of his time dedicated to graduating college, and none of it skating for competition. 

_“My dog died.”_

_“!!!! Very sorry. So sad. You okay?”_

_“Better now. You like dogs?”_

_“Yes! Much! Have one poodle.”_ (Here, Victor had attempted to draw a crude rendition of a poodle the best he could with pen on skin. Yuuri had printed a copy of the picture he’d taken and cut out Victor’s drawing to carefully paste it into his notebook.)

It was ridiculous that they had both spent so much time sending each other barely passable sentences in each other’s home languages, hardly even thinking to ask the other if, perhaps, they had a common speaking ground. If they had both just spoken in English, Yuuri supposes they could have avoided a lot of trouble.

Still, Yuuri’s heart had been too set in following the steps of his idol, _the_ Victor Nikiforov, to even consider introducing it to the idea of a soulmate; someone who might have not even liked Yuuri once they met in person.

(This is something Yuuri confessed to Victor, once. His fiancé had wasted no time in proving Yuuri wrong.)

Yuuri sighs and takes out his pen, clicking it absentmindedly. There’s nothing he needs or wants to say to Victor at the moment, though. Just knowing that he could write to Victor at any given moment brings Yuuri a sense of contentment. He could write a whole _paragraph_ to Victor now, if he really wanted to do so. (A text or a call would, of course, be far more practical.)

A lot of Yuuri’s translations had gone smoothly, considering Victor’s initial messages were only ever a few sentences long, especially when the latter had started to do his best to send Yuuri simpler sentences in Russian, as well smatterings of Japanese phrases. There was one message, however, that had taken Yuuri more than a single night’s work of translation. He _still_ wasn’t sure what it said even now.

The night of the skating gala was memorable for quite a few reasons. One, it was memorable exactly _because_ Yuuri could not, for the life of him, remember first hand exactly what had happened. He was never one to get black out drunk to the point of a lapse in memory. Two, it was apparently the one night of his life where he unveiled his apparent talent for pole dancing--of all things--to the general public. The fact that none of those pictures and videos had gone viral (at least to his knowledge) still baffles Yuuri to this day. And third, it was the very same night that he had met Victor for the first time _and_ received a bona fide essay from his soulmate.

The morning after the gala, Yuuri had carried himself, zombie-like, from the hotel bed to the bathroom, feeling dazed and slightly nauseous. At the sight of the mirror, he’d paused, surprise and a perplexed kind of horror creeping through his veins. The inked words had stretched across his arms, legs, _and_ torso, indecipherable Russian script in smudged ink that had Yuuri torn between leaping into the shower or grabbing his Russian dictionary from his suitcase and poring over the pages in his underwear. 

That day, however, Yuuri had had only moments before Celestino came to collect him from his hotel room. He swallowed his pride and snapped pictures of his soulmate’s words with his phone, careful to get as little extra skin in the photos as possible. (And God forbid someone were to see them--Yuuri made sure to copy them to his personal hard drive, and deleted the pictures from his phone immediately afterwards.)

Then he’d taken a shower. Yuuri often wonders now if Victor even remembered scribbling nonsense all over himself. He doubts Victor had seen it the morning after, though--Yuuri had probably washed it all down the drain before the other man had even woken up.

Then he went and graduated, left for home, and copied Victor’s skate routine. And the rest, as Victor likes to grandly say, is history.

Yuuri _does_ recall a few scattered phrases and words that he was able to painstakingly pull from Victor’s smudged handwriting. Words like ‘love’ and ‘starlight’ had been speckled throughout the writing on Yuuri’s arms, the first being a word Yuuri had become fondly familiar with. Since they hadn’t realized who, exactly, they were to each other at the time, though, Yuuri wonders what it was that prompted Victor to send his soulmate an extravagantly lengthed love note.

A bark brings Yuuri back to awareness, and he looks up to see Makkachin trotting back towards him, head held high.

“You done? You probably scared those poor things within an inch of their life,” Yuuri says, giving Makkachin an affectionate scratch under the chin. “Come on, let’s continue on home before Victor starts trying to tickle me with ink again.”

Makkachin huffs like he understands, which is all Yuuri really needs. The two continue on together, and Yuuri quickly notices that more and more people have stepped outside, shoulders hunched against the morning cold. 

A few cars start to fly by, and Yuuri steps Makkachin closer to the inside of the sidewalk. He’s grateful when the building Victor lives in comes into view. It’s not that he doesn’t like crowds (except, he actually _really_ isn’t partial to them at all), but the crowdedness of city life could get overwhelming, regardless of which city it was. 

Yuuri has his shoes toed off before the door to Victor’s flat even fully slams shut, and Makkachin is merely a blur down the hallway, sprinting towards the sound of familiar humming and the smell of pancakes. 

The humming stops abruptly, replaced by a startled laugh as Makkachin supposedly leaps onto his unsuspecting owner. When he rounds the corner, Yuuri is amused to find Victor sprawled out on the floor, a hefty pile of excitable dog sitting on his chest. 

“Yuuri!” Victor cheers, and Yuuri laughs as he leans down to let Victor place a hand on his cheek. “Welcome home.”

“I’m home,” Yuuri replies softly. “I see you’ve been busy.”

“Pancakes,” Victor says unnecessarily. On the table clearly sits a pile of fluffy golden brown hotcakes, which has Yuuri drawn towards the chairs like a magnet. Instead, though, Yuuri plops himself onto the floor beside Victor, more than happy to allow Makkachin to crowd his space too. 

“I can see that.” Yuuri blushes when Victor snags a hand in Yuuri’s scarf and tugs him down. Yuuri highly doubts that he’ll ever get used to kisses freely given out by _the_ Victor Nikiforov. Victor doesn’t like it when Yuuri jokes about his past fanboy tendencies though. _Don’t put me on a pedestal. Anything you feel for me, I feel for you ten times over. And I’m with you now, and this is the happiest I have ever been,_ Victor had said once. _What about you?_

Yuuri had been inclined to agree.

Then rather than being starstruck, Yuuri supposes that his inherent shyness may never go away when it comes to Victor. 

Victor runs a hand down Yuuri’s arm before pushing the sleeve up, and pulls away to look at the block of text with a pleased expression.

“You must think you’re _very_ funny,” Yuuri says with a laugh, gently swatting Victor’s hands away. “One of these days I’m going to cover you in ink before you can take me off guard again!”

Victor snorts good naturedly. “ _Yuuri._ You can write anything you want! I am… your _canvas._ ” Victor dramatically swoons backwards to land against Yuuri’s chest, and the latter falls to the hardwood floor with an exasperated wheeze.

“Anything you write is scripture. It is a masterpiece. Masters of old could never think to match the words of love you etch onto our skin!”

“Victor, excuse me, I can’t--”

“Imagine walking around with Yuuri’s squiggly handwriting, like having the world’s most childish tattoos… How endearing!”

“I--hey! My writing is not ‘squiggly’!”

“I don’t listen to people who don’t talk to me with affection.”

“Vitya, please get off of me. I think it’s time to ea--Makkachin, _no!_ ”

Both Yuuri and Victor let out twin yells of surprise when Makkachin launches himself at his owners. With one paw planted on Yuuri’s face, the poodle leans down to nose inquisitively at their cheeks. _What’s taking you two so long?_ is what Yuuri translates from those big brown eyes.

“Now I want you _both_ to get off,” Yuuri demands, and gets a mouthful of poodle paw for his troubles.

“O-kay,” Victor singsongs, rolling off Yuuri to envelope Makkachin in a hug. Man and dog wrestle around for a bit, and Makkachin barks enthusiastically. “Let’s eat before your daddy gets hangry!”

Yuuri huffs good naturedly as he lifts himself off the ground. When he bends to snatch his scarf from where it had fallen on the floor, Yuuri freezes. On the ground next to the sofa lies a very familiar looking worn out notebook--a notebook that Yuuri was _sure_ he had hidden deep inside its drawer, away from prying eyes.

“Victor,” Yuuri begins slowly. “What. Is that?”

Victor freezes, his back to Yuuri. Every line of him exudes guilt, and Victor clears his throat nervously. “That is my notebook.” He tilts his head up to the side, all innocence. “Very popular brand. Moleskin, I think.”

“I think,” Yuuri says, “that that’s mine.”

Victor coughs. “Well. You know what they say about couples deeply in love.”

Yuuri waits, eyes narrowed dangerously. Victor clears his throat.

“You know… I forget what they say.”

“Victor!” Yuuri explodes, covering his now burning face as he curls up onto the floor. “You _looked at my personal notebook!_ ”

“Yuuri!” Victor replies, sounding dismayed. “I only saw it when I was looking for a sweater of yours, and I was curious about why a notebook was in there. Maybe--perhaps you accidentally put it there? But I took a peek, and…”

Yuuri groans. 

“And I found out just how much you love me.”

When Yuuri dares to peek through his fingers, he’s startled to find Victor kneeling next to him, looking shy. 

“Yuuri,” Victor says softly. “That notebook is maybe the best discovery I have ever made. Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

Yuuri pauses, momentarily stumped. “I saved all of those messages. I actually even have pictures somewhere, and that’s how I’ve been logging them down and translating them. Don’t you think that’s kind of…” He scrambles for a word. “Lame?”

Victor frowns, before a sly smile turns up the corners of his lips. “It’s better than the time I found my posters and merchandise when we were moving you to St. Petersburg.”

“Victor!”

“‘Vitya’,” Victor corrects, collecting Yuuri’s hands in his own to pull them away from his face. Yuuri pauses, momentarily stunned at the change in demeanor. 

Victor had dropped the teasing expression, and instead stares at his fiance with a pleading look on his face. “Yuuri, please--you have to understand. Our beginning is not as ideal as I would have hoped, but we made it in the end, and that’s something that makes me endlessly happy, every single day. But this, _this_ book--” Victor snatches up Yuuri’s journal from the ground and waves it excitedly in the air. “It’s amazing to see just how much you’ve kept all this time! I sent message after message, and I know now that maybe you weren’t ready, but to see this just… makes me happy.”

“It makes me happy too. I had fun finally seeing what you’d been writing,” Yuuri mumbles. “I always meant to translate every bit of it, so I started taking pictures the second I got a camera.”

“You recorded quite a bit,” Victor says, flipping the book open. Yuuri winces, a fresh wave of nerves overtaking him, but Victor merely curls into him and places his head gently on Yuuri’s shoulder.

“You missed this one,” Victor tells him now. “It’s not that important--it’s a list of different channels I had to appear on for interviews when I was younger.”

“I hadn’t gotten to that one yet,” Yuuri admits, peering over Victor’s silver head of hair. “You know… if I had managed to translate a lot of these sooner, then I probably would have figured things out faster, too. Russian sports channels? Figure skating moves? Then again, I probably would have just told myself I was delusional. ”

“Eh,” Victor replies, flippant. “What’s done is done. Now, we can remember our fated connection as marked by the sacred purple mustache.”

“ _Victor._ ”

“ _This_ one,” Victor says, loudly talking over him, “is another shopping list. You started on this one, huh?” Yuuri yelps as Victor plops the book in his lap, only to let out yet another low sigh as Victor curls into him, wrapping his arms around Yuuri’s shoulders and pressing his lips against Yuuri’s neck.

“Do you know _why_ every single thing in that notebook of yours makes me so happy?”

Yuuri gulps, attempting to ignore the tickle of Victor’s breath against his skin. “N-no. Why?”

Victor leans back, taking away the all too enticing distraction, to beam up at Yuuri. “You kept as many of my messages as you could. I know you weren’t ready at the time, but you _cared_. I thought I had been writing to nobody, and yet, here they are. You kept them.”

“They were--they _are_ special. I’ve always cared. I know I let a lot of your writing just slip by, but…”

“I told you, that’s all in the past. Difficult history, but I’m all the more grateful for the present because of it.” Victor purses his lips almost comically, and Yuuri only shyly laughs out once this time before willfully leaning in to press his lips against Victor’s. 

When they pull away from each other a few dazed moments later, the flush on Victor’s cheeks properly matches Yuuri’s, and Yuuri takes a moment to blink appreciatively at his fiance.

“Do you want me to translate something for you?” says Victor eagerly, blinking away the haze of infatuation in his eyes to look at Yuuri excitedly. “I could start helping!”

“You’re going to make learning Russian a lot more difficult for me,” Yuuri chides without any actual feeling. “But… I _was_ curious about one thing.”

“Show me!” Victor leans in eagerly when Yuuri flips his notebook open, almost immediately going to the right page through memory. The change in Victor’s face as he takes the book from Yuuri and reads through the script is almost comical. The smile on his face freezes, and it’s apparent that Victor is keeping it plastered on his face by sheer willpower alone.

“Not this one.”

“What? Why?” It was the message Victor had sent him after the night of the gala. Too long and too smudged for Yuuri to have any hope of translating with ease, so it was only _right_ that Victor tell him what it all meant, especially since the man had taken Yuuri’s personal belongings in the first place!

“Um… would you believe me if I told you it was a steamy account of all the things I would have _loved_ to do to you at the time? Things I could do right now?” Victor turns coy and winks slyly at Yuuri.

Yuuri commends himself for blushing and stuttering for only a few seconds before he realizes the flirtatious look on Victor’s face is much too forced to be natural. “Liar. I want to know what you said.”

Victor pouts, dropping the act immediately. “...The pancakes are getting cold?”

“The faster you translate, the faster we can go and eat. I’ve been looking forward to your breakfast all morning.” Yuuri presses his forehead against Victor’s and does his best to attempt his greatest rendition of Victor yet. “ _Pleaaaaase?_ ”

Victor scowls, but it’s obvious to the both of them that he’s fighting back a smile. “Only because I love you so much.”

“I know!” Yuuri says cheerfully, leaping towards the sofa and patting the seat next to him. Victor regards him bemusedly before scooping up the notebook and plopping down.

“We are becoming too much alike in some ways, I think.”

“Adopting each others’ mannerisms you mean? I noticed. Don’t think you can get away with so much anymore, Vitya.”

Victor snorts good naturedly and thumbs through the pages until he finally gets to the proper sections. His ears begin to turn red--Yuuri leans in eagerly now, because something that flusters Victor this much _must_ be important.

“It’s a little… choppy? That’s how I’d like to describe it, just because I was tipsy that night.”

“Drunk,” Yuuri corrects cheekily, and Victor childishly sticks his tongue out at Yuuri in retaliation before clearing his throat.

“Here, it starts… _Good afternoon, good evening, good morning._ And then I wrote that again maybe…” Victor pauses, eyes scrolling, “a couple sentences more.”

“If you repeated yourself a lot that night, then it’s no wonder I was covered in ink.”

“Hush, my love, or you’ll never find out what this says,” Victor chides, but he’s smiling now. The look in his eyes is almost bemusedly resigned, like he can’t believe he’s reading this out loud to Yuuri, but he might as well have fun now that his drunken escapades are being revealed. (And hey--if Yuuri’s pole dancing had to be shown to him for the first time in front of all their friends and competitors, then Yuuri figures Victor can at least give his own fiance some insight to his drunken mind.)

“ _I would like to tell you something,_ ” Victor continues. “ _I met a person who shines like starlight tonight, and they are what I imagine and what I hope you are like.” Victor sighs. “I hope you don’t mind, but we danced together and it was so, so, so, so, so--_ ”

“Victor.”

“ _\--so fun._ ” Victor’s voice clears, and he’s no longer reciting . “And then I don’t understand what this portion here says, because I think you might have gotten some of the transcription wrong?”

“It was a little hard copying it down. I can find the actual pictures later, but… some of them are ones I don’t really like having a hard copy of, because of how much of my body you used to write on,” Yuuri says grumpily.

Victor perks up. “Oh? I want to see.”

“No! Finish reading what you can first!”

Yuuri’s fiance pouts again, before shaking his head as he flips the pages back and forth. “Like I said, Yuuri--it’s choppy. I call you the ‘starlight boy’ again--” Victor’s ears go a little pink again “--and then I apologize ‘to my soulmate’ because I thought it was rude to talk about someone else to someone I had a connection to. But then I call you pretty a couple times, and then I apologize again. It is… circular.” Victor laughs when he flips the page again. “And here I say, _their butt was very perky--but don’t worry. I’m sure when I see_ your _butt, I will like it better than anyone else’s_.”

“Victor!” Yuuri exclaims, scandalized. “Wh--I don’t even know where to--imagine if I wasn’t your soulmate!”

“But you were, and you are, and now more than ever I get to see that perky--”

Yuuri makes the verbal approximation of a keyboard smash, and Makkachin perks his head up from where he’d laid down next to the table. “ _No._ Please don’t continue. What happened to you being shy?”

Victor shrugs, beaming. “I got over it, especially since your reactions are funnier. I don’t think this is as bad as what I thought I’d write.”

When Victor flips the page again, his smile falters. “Oh. Well. Here, I wrote, _I confess I pretended I was dancing with you at first, until I wasn't. He was very charming, and I wish I could meet him again. I’m sorry. I do think I would like you more, if I could only just meet you. When I see them again, I will make a good new friend and introduce them to my soulmate._ ”

Both men sit in silence for a moment, before Victor jerks his head up at the sound of an agonized groan.

“And then I couldn’t even remember meeting you. I left you waiting _twice in a row?_ ” Yuuri says, looking absolutely aghast. 

“But then you danced for me!” Victor says, cheerful and unbothered. “And so I came to Japan to teach the man who danced for me and with me, _and_ to look for my soulmate. I killed two birds with one stone. Very efficient of me, if I may say so myself.”

Yuuri grumbles at himself. He finally looks up when Victor moves to entangle their hands together, the notebook falling to the wayside. For a second, Yuuri’s standing in Barcelona again, shyly sliding a ring onto Victor’s finger. The expression on Victor’s face is not unlike the one he had on that night, and Yuuri’s relaxes.

“What’s done is done, remember? What’s important is that we’re together now.” Their rings knock together, and Yuuri smiles despite himself. 

“I love you.”

“I love you _more_.”

Yuuri snorts, and reaches into his pocket. Before Victor can say anything else, Yuuri carefully but quickly moves to draw on Victor’s nose, etching a tiny lopsided heart onto skin.

Victor merely looks incredulously at him. “...you drew a _butt_ on my nose? Is this because I called yours perky when I was drunk?”

“It’s a heart!” Yuuri yells, embarassment making him chuck his pen at the floor. Victor laughs giddily before bundling up Yuuri into a hug and giving him and forceful kiss on the cheek.

“If we’re done reading my drunken transcriptions, then I think it’s time for pancakes!”

“I think you’re right,” Yuuri agrees with a sigh. He presses a hand against Victor’s cheek, and the man grins at him.

Yuuri figures that Victor is, of course, right. It had taken quite a lot to get to where they were, and he can’t deny that there were times that were incredibly difficult, especially when he hadn't been ready to open his heart to someone he hadn't _really_ known at first, but… as Yuuri sits there, bashfully accepting the bite of pancake Victor offers to him, he acknowledges that the happiness he has now is completely and totally, one hundred percent worth it all.  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
